http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/received.xml en-us eBlog@synaptic.bc.ca 2006-02-02T05:07:30-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2006/02/overcome.php From the Art-Crawl Yahoo Group. I'm not really sure how I got on this list, and the content doesn't really seem appropriate for the content. I think it's a hangover from Web Ring days. Nonetheless, every now and again Art-Crawl produces a gem like this one whic arrived under the subject, "Inspiration of the Day.". Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth. Dhammapada 223 p<br /><br /> 393@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2006-02-02T05:07:30-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2005/08/internal_peace.php Internal peace is an essential first step to achieving peace in the world. How do you cultivate it? It's very simple. In the first place by realizing clearly that all mankind is one, that human beings in every country are members of one and the same family." The Dalai Lama http://www.flybynews.com/<br /><br /> 365@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2005-08-20T11:51:16-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2005/07/flying_on_the_wings_of_thought.php From a listserver I recently subscribed to... "Just as the heart beats in the darkness of the body, so I, despite this cage, continue to beat with life. Those who have no courage or honor consider themselves free, but they are slaves. I am flying on the wings of thought, and so, even in this cage, I know a greater freedom." -- Abdul Rahim Muslim {2001 - 2004 was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by US} >-----------------------Flyby News--------------------====> News Fit to Transmit in the post Cassini flyby era >> http://www.flybynews.com >> ----------------------------------------------------------- <br /><br /> 346@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2005-07-27T23:16:12-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2004/01/fwd_detroit_vs_silicon_valley.php [Forwards rebooting] >-----Original Message----- > >When Silicon Valley wants to look good, it measures itself against >Detroit. The comparison goes like this: If automotive technology had >kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you >would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top >speed of 10,000 miles per hour. Or you could have an economy car that >weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to a gallon of gas. In >either case the sticker price of a new car would be less than $50. >In response to all this goading, Detroit grumbles: > >Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that crashes twice a day? > <br /><br /> 156@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2004-01-11T13:09:14-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2004/01/fw_geronimoooooooo.php From: "patrick jennings" To: "humour list" Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 1997 9:32 PM Subject: [Fwd: FW: Geronimoooooooo!] This is a definite candidate for the urban legends page... [Forwards lost at sea] > -----Original Message----- > > Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese Trawler were plucked > out of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. > Their rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once > authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. To a man > they claimed > that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler > amidships, shattering it's hull and sinking the vessel within minutes. > > They remained in prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force > reluctantly informed Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its > cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a > Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily > taken > off for home. Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was > ill-equipped to manage a now rampaging cow within its hold. To save > the aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo > hold as they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet. <br /><br /> 152@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2004-01-10T08:40:23-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2004/01/chain_mails_that_make_you_go_hmmm.php I got one of those chain mails in my inbox yesterday. They're always at least mildly annoying, but some of them are good for a personal moment. This one provides an opportunity to think on what's important in your life. Sort of folk psychology. <br /><br />" hspace="4" align="right" border="0">Presently listening to:Unfinished Sympathy - Massive Attack & Portishead - (02:18)&keyword=&mode=music">/" target="_blank"> ]]> 148@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2004-01-07T17:22:43-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2004/01/fw_proud_to_be_canadian.php I have always been a Canadian, though, in a sense, it is my adopted country. My earliest memories are of Red Deer, Alberta, and Montreal, Quebec. However, before that I was born in West Germany, and shortly after those memories, my family moved to the United States, where I grew up, graduated high-school and attended a year of University. I didn't return to live in Canada until a few months after my 20th birthday. And the return has become permanent. In time I gave up my coveted US Green Card--an object I'd fastidiously protected until my late 20's--without so much as batting an eye. I had long before that realised I was now living in a country that fit. Not to say Canada's perfect, but it's more suitable than all the other places I've been. Of late, the country of my birthright has been taking it on the chin from the country of my childhood. Raw deals on raw softwood. Mad cow hypocrisy. Salmon wars. And the whole with-us-or-against-us Iraq bit. Lest we forget that the best friends say yes when it is best to say yes, and no when it is best to say, no, regardless of what the other friend wishes, or demands. Like a hurt, angry friend sometimes does, our neighbour to the south has forgotten all the times Canadians have unflinchingly said yes. And it appears to not understand that, sometimes, the most courageous act of friendship is to say, I disagree; I cannot go along with that. <br /><br /> ----- Original Message ----- From: James Armstrong Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 9:53 AM Subject: Fwd: RE: Proud to be Canadian! A friend forwarded this to me, I found it to be quite good, thought you might enjoy it and hey that's what the Internet is for!. - Jim ____________ The maple leaves must be budding ? the following was forwarded by a British friend just today. I was browsing an English broadsheet and came across this article. I thought I'd relay it to you chaps, to let you know that Canadian efforts are not going completed unnoticed in the rest of the world, outside of the US. I know that some of you are pretty enthusiastic armchair historians/politicians, so this might be of interest. Having spent a year here, now, I can, to some extent, relate to this, even though, as you may know, I'm far from being a jingoistic flag waver... ***************************************** LONDON - Until the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a U.S. warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again. That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada's entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle. Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as somehow or other the work of the "British." The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated -- a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity. So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality -- unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British. It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers. Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves -- and are unheard by anyone else -- that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth -- in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia. Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace -- a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit. So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This week, four more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well. 138@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2004-01-06T07:18:22-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2003/12/behold_the_man.php /" target="_blank">" hspace="4" align="right" border="0"> ]]><br /><br /> 102@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Newsgroups 2003-12-24T03:34:10-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2003/12/re_seeking_class_of_79_ghs_alumni.php " hspace="4" align="right" border="0">Presently listening to: I am a rock - Simon and Garfunkel - (02:52)/" target="_blank"> ]]><br /><br /> 35@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2003-12-14T04:22:33-08:00 http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/archives/2003/12/spherical_bastards.php Being in something of a writing slump for a long while I've decided to remind myself I can write by wandering through my sent mail log. I'll post anything worthwhile to the blog. I'm also pretty fond of found stuff. Even better, clever things folks write to me. Whatever's appropriate, or especially delicious, I'll post here as well. Here's something I forwarded on to a number of friends, back in 97. [Forwards not coming down to earth] > >-----Original Message----- > >"We astronomers really can be spherical bastards," said one scientist. > > Not having heard the term before, I leaned over and inquired what he > > meant, "Spherical bastard" he repeated, "a term left over from Edwin > > Hubbble's day to describe a malcontent from any angle." > > > > - Eric J. Chaisson, "The Hubble Wars" > > > > p. /" target="_blank">" hspace="4" align="right" border="0">Presently listening to: Skin & Bones - The Sundays - Reading Writing & Arithmetic (04:17)/" target="_blank"><br /><br /> 32@http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/NoMadMaN/ Received 2003-12-14T03:48:59-08:00